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Montevideo, June (IPS). Beyond Partisan colours and in spite of the criticism of their party colleagues, Uruguayan legislators joined their forces and achieved the necessary votes to approve laws in favour of gender equality, and others including rights which had been denied for years.



It all started in 2000, when the few women who had been able to get a place in the Lower House of Parliament found out that together, they would have the chance of doing something in favour of the women’s agenda regardless of their partisan colours. That is how they created the Women’s Caucus, which in 2005 became the Women’s Bicameral Caucus (BBF), when some of them gained their way to the Senate.



This is how laws promoted by the BBF were passed o gave support to others, so that women should be able to choose a person to be present during childbirth, so that domestic violence should not be described as “crimes of passion”, about sex education in primary school, equality of labour rights of domestic employees and penalising sexual labour harassment.



The Lawyer Diana González, specialised in gender issues, highlighted that the approval of the project on sexual and reproductive health, which was finally vetoed by then President Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) was an achievement of the women’s caucus.



The flexibilisation law in favour of women’s access to retirement pension by counting two more years of contributions for each child, and the body of regulations giving more competence to judicial power to fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation were also a result of their work.



“There is no doubt that it was the BBF which promoted these bills”, declared Gonzalez, author of the book “Legislative production as regards gender and generational equality during the period February 2005-November 2009”, written in the framework of the project G of the initiative “Joined in Action”, a project of the Uruguayan government and United Nations Organisation agencies, presented to Parliament on June 24^th.



“When analysing the process of approval of each one of these bills, the inclusion of the notions of equity and gender were contributions of these women who acted regardless of their political positions and in favour of their common interest”, she said to IPS.

But there is still much work to do because, “being achieved through negotiation, they are not high-quality bills as expected”, she warned.



The exercise of freshening structures, including different perspectives and democratising power, was not welcomed by all, and according to pioneer lawmakers of the initiative, some paid very high political cost.



Beatríz Argimón, a congresswoman in the period from 2000 to 2010 for the right-wing and opposing National Party, was excluded from the candidate’s list for last year’s election due to her support of the called “quota law”. Her political group declares “she has serious problems with the issue of women’s access to power”.



Meanwhile, Glenda Rondán, representative of the opposing Colorado Party from 2000 to 005, suffered similar consequences while supporting the decriminalisation of abortion. “When you want to change things you pay a price, and if you are a women you pay three times over”, stated who has been excluded from the sector’s structures.

Senator Monica Xavier, from the left-wing governing coalition Frente Amplio, agreed that “even if the caucus proved to have some kind of institutional force, we constantly suffer the attacks from our colleagues who refuse to accept we have achieved such a powerful space”.



“There are true misogynists among congressmen”, Xavier told IPS.



Against De facto inequality



BBF, as explained by the consulted women, is a way of making up for the absence of female representation in Congress. The participation in the Uruguayan political life continues to grow at a visibly slow pace, according to Niki Johnson, coordinator of the Politics and Gender Area of the Political Science Department of the state University of the Republic.



The expert indicated to IPS, that the electoral system, “designed and dominated by men, who give unfair advantage to existing male leaders”, is one of the reasons which prevent women from on equal grounds.



This situation will continue until at least 2010, when the quota law will come into force for the national and municipal elections, through which parties will be forced to include one-third if candidates of the opposite sex in their lists for parliament and provincial legislatures.



The law was approved in 2009, but so far it could only be applied for internal party elections.



The World Classification of Women in Parliaments places Uruguay far down the list in Latin America, where the average of female presence reaches a 23.3 per cent, and in the world the average is of 18.9 per cent.



Instead of improving this ranking as regards women representation, it went down during last year’s election, when the left won for the second time in the history of this country of 3.3 million people.



The level of women in parliament is of 14, 6 percent, scarcely higher than Chile, with 13.9 percent and well below Argentina, with 37, 8 percent, and Costa Rica, with 36, 9 percent, according to the result of a research presented this month under the title of “A feminine perspective at 2009 Uruguayan Elections” written by Johnson and her colleague, political scientist Verónica Pérez.



To make our way as we go



The creation of the women’s caucus claims direct descent from the Programmatic National Coordination, a multi party forum created in 1984 during the transition towards democracy, restored in March 1985 after 12 years of dictatorship.



At this moment, the BBF notion of “symbolic political actor” is born, important for organised and non-organised women at the moment of influencing public policies, told margarita Percovich, law maker from the Frente Amplio from 2000 to 2005 and afterwards senator up to the present.



“Traditional politics, with its endless fights, had tired us all. Men pointed out the differences, we did exactly the opposite”, said Percovich, now voluntarily away from any political position.



Accordingly, Roldán said that they learnt that “in spite of the differences, there will always be points of common concern”.



The BBF held the “Tobi Club” (as they call the male’s supremacy in political parties) in check, opened a political debate on gender issues, promoted legal initiatives to improve women’s quality of life, repealed laws violating women’s rights and made it very clear that the defence of women’s rights should be important for everybody regardless of the partisan ideology, said Argimón.



Now the caucus is organising workshops throughout the country together with the Network of Political Women, with the support of the United Nations Population Fund in the framework of the project “Support for public policies for the reduction of gender and generational inequalities” as the result of the agreement of parliament, government and the U.N.



Xavier told IPS that the activities were started this year with the Seminar ”Equitable Budget” with the idea of incorporating that perspective to the five-year financial plan. “To achieve that would be as to score a goal from the half-way line”, he stated.



Silvana Silveira

Source: IPS http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=95797